Child-centred Analysis of National Immunization Laws – Australia as a Case Study

Abstract

The paper uses a child centered approach to analyze Australia’s child immunization laws. These laws conditions enrolment to early education centers on the child being fully immunized, and provide financial incentives to parents, encouraging them to comply with the national immunization protocol. The paper seeks to contribute to the debates in public health about the utility of human rights and the definition of the ‘public’ by problematizing the marginalization of children from this space. Navigating between the positionalities of individuals and collectives in two terrains, namely human rights and public health, the paper examines how children and their rights are conceptualized in the development of immunization policies, and asks what these laws tell us about children’s positionality, lives and bodies in society. It argues that the current child immunization laws commodify children’s bodies, physically and figuratively, as a mean to protect the entire population from infectious diseases. This reproduces children and childhood as a mean to an end, seeing childhood as a vehicle to adulthood. Utilizing a child centered approach can advance a different approach to public health matters concerning children, safeguarding their rights in this domain and in turn change their public visibility.